For the spot "Baking Of..." Chris Palmer constructed a Skoda Fabia car entirely out of cake. It's a unique accomplishment; one that may not be repeated and one that should do well on the awards circuit. But like many directors, he says he doesn't give much credence to little gold statues.

"You can do a really good ad that cleans up but you never seem to get anything on the back of it," he says. Though he practically paints an image of himself sitting alone in his office, waiting for the postman to stuff a script through the mail slot, it's business as usual at Gorgeous Enterprises. In addition to Skoda, he helmed the unexpectedly funny Specsavers "Collie" about an overzealous sheep dog and its vision-impaired master. He also directed "Awareness Test" for TFL, as well as effective PSA work for Amnesty International ("Channel Hop") and DEFRA ("Act on CO2"). Speaking of award shows, he's recently wrapped a web viral for Saatchi & Saatchi's New Directors Showcase, in which he stars.

But 2008 may see the creative-turned-director make the jump to the big screen. He has three film projects in development: Lunatic At Large, a 1956 script by Paths of Glory screenwriter Jim Thompson based on an idea by Stanley Kubrick, a film about Mad Magazine founder William Gaines and a post-apocalyptic comedy set in New York called Drinks and Dinner. "On your gravestone is The Sound of Music rather than the marmalade ad," he says of the potential pluses of being a film director. "I suppose you can reach a lot of people with a film."

Why do you want to do features?
Ultimately, what I like is I can write them myself. With commercials, you have to wait for someone else to send you work, so you're quite vulnerable. It's quite frustrating sitting here waiting for a script to turn up. It's ironic being in "Directors in Demand" because I don't feel in demand at all...

Do you think making films will be easier than making commercials?
I don't think it's going to be any easier; you've got plenty of other people telling you what to do and what not to do. It's part of the process - 90% of the time you can actually use it to your advantage. I've done a lot of things where other people suggested doing things I might not have done - but I did and I got the credit for it. I'm really happy to try things because at the end of the day I get the credit. The more of a fight I put up or the more I'm convinced that it's a really stupid idea, there's more of a chance that it's going to be something worthwhile. I don't know why... Not that I want to encourage clients to tell me what to do.

Can you give an example of when such a suggestion led to an unexpectedly good idea and improved the spot?
Once I did a Heineken ad with these dustmen and they were being very, very quiet, and at the end there was a bird singing and a big dustman's glove came and squashed the beak shut so the bird couldn't sing. I said, "Look, I'll cover the bird shot but it seems to be from another ad, it doesn't seem to fit." Of course it worked a treat. Shows how much I know. The irony was the amount of people who said, "God, that was so typical of you, I could see you all over it", and it had nothing to do with me.

Hmmm...
I think "charlatan" is the word you're looking for (laughs). The late John Webster, the creative at BMP, he was a genius. He was legendary for being able to take on aggressive criticism and turn it to his advantage. At BMP everything was tested and he had the ability to take a script that was completely changed in research and then improve on it. Some people would crumble, but others will use the negatives to their advantage.

Do you have that ability?
I think so. I try to use negatives - sometimes you're so wrapped up in what you're doing, you get a great overview a week later in editing, but when you're in the thick of it sometimes you do get comments from the most unlikely sources. It could be the agency, could be a member of the crew. I think I've got the ability to recognize a good comment wherever it comes from. The problem is if you're too open you do invite people to walk all over you... Quite often the more it offends me, the better it turns out to be afterwards.

Did that happen during the Skoda shoot?
[Fallon's] creative director Richard Flintham made a [head]light out of Fox's Glacier Mints. He had this thing halfway through the shoot; "We've got to make the lens of the light out of Fox's Glacier Mints." And I'm juggling a million things at this point; I didn't really understand what he was saying, so he just sat down with a glue gun and started shaping the light lens out of Fox's Glacier Mints, which is a pretty insane thing to do. But an hour or so later I said, "That's pretty good, Rich." So the art department carried on and it was a really nice touch.

INFORMATION
production affiliation: Co-owner of London's Gorgeous Enterprises.

jack-of-all-trades: "I don't have a style as such, so with every job I'm reinventing myself. If you're a jack of all trades you're always going to be up against an expert that does one thing really, really well. I tend to change [the script], which is not a popular thing to do if you're up against someone who's happy to shoot the script in its current form. Another disadvantage of working with me is I do tend to have a point of view and an opinion."

Gorgeous Enterprises http://www.gorgeous.co.uk